The Best Mini-ITX Hackintosh Motherboards

Hackintoshes are often stereotyped as big, lumbering workstations with full-size ATX boards and 40-pound computer cases. In reality, there are quite a few Hackintosh builds based around mini-ITX motherboards, which are smaller alternatives to more standard micro-ATX and ATX motherboards. Though we might never be able assemble a computer as small as Apple's super-tiny Mac Mini, it's still easy to assemble a respectably size-conscious Hackintosh for your personal use. So in the interest of saving you time, I've put together a list of Hackintosh-friendly mini-ITX motherboards, all of which can run OS X Mountain Lion with Unibeast.

How to use Multibeast 5: a comprehensive guide for Mountain Lion

LATEST UPDATE (October 27, 2013): Updated guide to reflect Multibeast 5.5 updates.

Recently, tonymacx86 released Multibeast 5, a version of Multibeast customized specifically for OS X Mountain Lion, Apple's newest version of Mac OS X. The layout of Multibeast has been revamped, and many incompatible and outdated options have been removed. Even so, opening Multibeast can be an intimidating experience for anybody new to Hackintoshes. This guide is here to help. 

How to install OS X Mountain Lion on a MBR partition with Unibeast

When you install Windows on a hard drive, it automatically sets the partition scheme of your hard disk to MBR (Master Boot Record). Mac OS X doesn't support this partition scheme, but you can still install OS X Mountain Lion on a hard disk with the MBR partition scheme by modifying "OSInstall.mpkg" and "OSInstall", two installation files inside your Unibeast USB drive. This means that you can install Mac OS X on a hard drive that already has Windows installed.

How to set up the UEFI of your Hackintosh's Gigabyte motherboard

In their newest series of motherboards, Gigabyte has replaced the traditional motherboard BIOS with UEFI, a newer (and better-looking) interface for managing motherboard settings. The layout of the UEFI on Gigabyte motherboards is different from the old BIOS layout, and there are a few new settings that need to be changed to work optimally with Mac OS X. Rather than adding yet another section to our standard OS X installation guides, we've put together a separate guide to cover the UEFI setup process.

How to install OS X Mountain Lion in Virtualbox with Hackboot

We've already shown you how to use Virtualbox to install Mac OS X Snow Leopard and Mac OS X Lion on virtual machines in Windows, since it's great practice for installing Mac OS X on your actual computer. And now that OS X Mountain Lion 10.8 has been officially released, we can finally demonstrate how to do it with Mountain Lion too.

How to speed up your Hackintosh's boot time in Mountain Lion 10.8.0

After I updated my Hackintosh from Mac OS X Lion to Mountain Lion, the amount of time it took Mac OS X nearly doubled. The boot time of my SSD increased from 20 seconds to 40 seconds, while the boot time of my normal hard drive increased from 1 minute to 2 minutes. If you're experiencing similar problems with your Hackintosh after making the upgrade to Mountain Lion, you've come to the right place; it turns out there's an easy solution after all!

Enable HD 4000 graphics on your Hackintosh (updated)

OS X Mountain Lion added support for Intel HD 4000 integrated graphics this week. However, it does not work by default on Hackintoshes. To enable graphics support for HD 4000, you have to install the newest version of Chimera bootloader and make a few adjustments.

How to install OS X Mountain Lion on your PC with Unibeast

LAST UPDATED: January 3, 2013

If you're interested in running Mac OS X, but you don't want to pay ridiculous prices for a normal Mac, then a Hackintosh just might be for you. Right now, the newest iteration of OS X is 10.8, known as Mountain Lion. Installing Mountain Lion on a PC is pretty much the exact same as installing Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion). This guide is based off tonymacx86's method for installing Mountain Lion, except that we cover it with more detail (and pictures!).

Enable HD 4000 graphics on your Hackintosh (experimental)

By default, Intel HD 4000 integrated graphics are not supported by Mac OS X. You cannot change the screen resolution on a Hackintosh that uses HD 4000, and there's no graphics acceleration. However, in the recent Macbook Pro software update, Apple included graphics drivers that added support for Intel HD 4000. Though nobody was initially able to get these drivers to work with Hackintoshes, this has finally changed.

Dell XPS 8300: The Pre Built Hackintosh That You Can Buy From Any Store

We generally recommend that you build your own Hackintosh, since setting up Mac OS X is a lot easier when you know exactly what parts your computer uses. There are very few prebuilt desktop computers that have been confirmed to work with Mac OS X. However, if building your own computer is not practical, you've still got one good option: the Dell XPS 8300.